Yoga Beyond Asanas: Traditional Paths, Eight Limbs & Guru-Shishya Tradition
What is yoga beyond the physical practice?
In episode 2 of Reclaiming Yoga, we continue our conversation with Anshika Kochar to explore the deeper meaning of yoga — Karma Yoga, Bhakti Yoga, gyana Yoga and Raja Yoga — and how each path leads toward a deeper understanding of consciousness.
We also talk about the Guru-Shishya tradition, the traditional transmission of yogic knowledge, and Patanjali’s eight limbs of yoga. This conversation explores how yoga was preserved as a living tradition and why understanding its original purpose is important.
Join us as we explore the philosophy, discipline, and wisdom behind traditional yoga.
Modern Yoga vs Ancient Yoga: What Happened to the True Meaning of Yoga?
In this episode of Reclaiming Yoga: The Lost Science of Consciousness, we explore the deeper meaning of yoga beyond the modern idea of yoga as only exercise, stretching, or physical practice.
Many people today know yoga as stretching, exercise, flexibility, fitness, or a class performed on a mat. But the traditional understanding of yoga goes much deeper. Yoga was never only about the body — it was a path toward recognizing consciousness, transforming oneself, and living from within.
In this conversation, Anshika Kochar, a yoga therapist, counselor, and women’s wellness educator, shares her understanding of authentic yoga and the importance of returning to its roots.
The strongest teachers are not built through shortcuts or passive videos. Classical YOGA creates online Yoga Nidra training experiences that feel personal, grounded, and genuinely transformative for practitioners ready to deepen their learning and teaching journey. Experience techniques rooted in authentic tradition, with guided mentorship that goes far beyond surface-level wellness trends with https://www.classicalyoga.co.uk/
Discover the serenity of fresh organic Satvik food at Om Yoga Ashram in Mcleodganj, where authentic yoga training meets mindful eating. Expe
A Himalayan Reset: Living Yoga at Om Yoga Ashram, McLeodganj 🌿🧘♀️
There are places you visit… and then there are places that quietly change you.
Hidden in the peaceful hills of McLeodganj, Dharamshala (Himachal Pradesh, India), Om Yoga Ashram offers more than a retreat — it offers a return to simplicity, discipline, and inner clarity.
Mornings begin with the soft sound of birds and fresh mountain air. Days unfold through traditional yoga, meditation, and mindful breathing. Evenings close with soulful bhajans and kirtan that bring a sense of calm you didn’t know you were missing.
Life here follows a natural rhythm:
– Fresh, organic satvik food that nourishes from within
– Yoga Teacher Training (Yoga Alliance Certified) for those ready to go deeper
– Sound Healing and Reiki courses for subtle, powerful transformation
– Clean, cozy rooms with views of the Kangra Valley
– Silence, nature, and space to reconnect with yourself
This isn’t luxury in the usual sense. It’s something quieter. More real.
It’s for those who feel the need to pause, reflect, and realign. For those who want to experience yoga not just as practice, but as a way of living.
If that resonates with you, your journey might be waiting here.
Yoga Classes in India – Holistic Wellness Experience
India is known as the birthplace of yoga, offering authentic learning experiences rooted in tradition. Practicing yoga in such an environment allows you to go beyond physical exercise and understand the deeper aspects of breath, awareness, and discipline.
This image reflects the community and guided learning aspect of yoga classes, where individuals grow together in a supportive setting.
Learn more about yoga programs and wellness experiences
On Authenticity, Introversion, and Staying True in a Noisy World
A Gentle Note Before You Read
Writing this felt both vulnerable and necessary, an open door into parts of my experience I usually keep quiet.
It’s not polished or perfect, but I believe there’s strength in honest truth. Showing up as we really are, fragile, messy, and imperfect, is where real connection begins.
This post shares what it’s like to teach yoga quietly and authentically, away from the noise and performance. If any of it resonates with you, I’m truly grateful you’re here.
With warmth and care,
Jo
Holding Space in a Shifting World
Running a small, independent yoga school is not for the faint of heart. It asks something more than hustle. It asks something quieter, older, and far more fragile.
In a world where yoga is often reduced to choreography, aesthetics, and curated feeds, choosing to teach from a place of authenticity, from your bones, your breath, your raw and unfiltered self, can feel like swimming upstream.
It can feel like grief.
It can feel like resistance.
It can feel like an almost invisible act of devotion.
And in the age of algorithms and endless scrolling, that choice comes with real tension.
Not Built for the Algorithm
Some days, showing up on social media feels like walking barefoot through thorns.
I am not a performer. I do not love the lens.
My practice is not aesthetic. It’s elemental.
It lives in the woods when I walk among trees.
It lives in stillness, in tears, in the way my chest softens when I finally let myself rest.
I don’t do asana every day. Sometimes my yoga is simply lying down. Or watching the wind. Or saying no.
We eat a mostly plant-based diet, not as a performance, but as a quiet choice rooted in care. But I don’t talk about it much online.
I’m not brewing kombucha or showing off big, beautiful salads on my feed. Some days I’m too low, too fragile, too overwhelmed to cook at all. Those days look like pizza, dark chocolate, and a quiet retreat into Netflix, not because I’ve stopped practising, but because that is the practice. The part that’s rarely seen, but deeply real.
And in the midst of all that quiet, all that resistance to spectacle,
I live and teach in a body the wellness industry often erases.
A Body That Remembers the Whole Cycle
I’m a plus-size woman in the crone phase of life, a phase our culture too often resists, overlooks, or renders invisible.
But in the yogic and earth-rooted traditions I lean into, the crone is not an end point. She is a deepening. A distillation. She holds all phases within her (maiden, mother, creatrix, wild one) not as memories, but as living threads woven through the body.
This body, my body, carries that full cycle.
It has known desire and depletion, heartbreak and healing.
It is round, wise, tender, and fierce. Not in spite of age and shape, but because of them.
I don’t fit the dominant image of a yoga teacher, not thin, not youthful, not curated for a brand.
But I know how to hold space.
I know how to soften.
I know how to listen with my skin.
And I teach from that place.
This body doesn’t need to be sculpted or reduced to be worthy of the practice. It is already sacred. Already enough.
And still, the struggle continues.
There are days I feel the internalised noise.
There are moments I flinch from being seen.
Because we live in a world that rarely reflects back the truth that yoga belongs to every body, at every age, in every phase, at every size.
But visibility, for bodies like mine, is a radical act of belonging.
It is a way of saying: you are allowed to age, to soften, to grow round, to be tired, to be powerful, and still practise, still teach, still lead.
And when you move through the world with this kind of sensitivity, in both body and nervous system, the outer noise doesn’t just echo, it pierces.
A Fragile Nervous System in a Loud World
Being introverted is part of it. But I am also a highly sensitive person (HSP), which means the world comes in loud and fast. Noise, brightness, decisions, deadlines: they don’t just drain me. They unravel me.
Teaching yoga has always been my way of tending to that sensitivity. Not fixing it, not hardening it, but honouring it.
Yet the modern wellness world often feels like the very opposite of that kind of care. It’s loud. Competitive. Demanding. Visually saturated. And I confess, there are days I simply want to hide.
There are days I feel so exposed. So fragile.
Even writing this, these words, feels like a soft underbelly turned skyward.
But this is what we don’t talk about enough:
That being a yoga educator is not just about guiding others.
It’s about navigating our own edges.
And for those of us wired to feel deeply, that navigation is constant.
And all the while, we continue to teach against the grain, offering a form of yoga that doesn’t photograph well, but lives deep in the body.
Teaching Against the Grain
There’s a kind of yoga being sold now: sculpted, filtered, fast-paced.
It looks impressive on Instagram. It looks flawless in leggings.
But it’s not the yoga I live.
The yoga I live is less photogenic and more alive.
It’s seasonal, like the moon.
It’s messy, like real healing.
It’s slow, spacious, deeply sensory.
It includes grief. It includes laughter. It includes the mundane.
It happens in the everyday rituals, lighting a candle, watering the plants, walking barefoot, resting deeply.
Sometimes it includes no mat at all.
We don’t offer quick fixes at Yoga Nature.
We don’t promise transformation in 30 days.
We offer something inconveniently real.
And that can be harder to sell.
But it’s also what keeps us true.
Because ultimately, this practice isn’t about what we achieve,
it’s about how we stay.
The Real Practice
The real practice is not in the posture.
It’s in staying soft when you want to armour up.
It’s in resting when the world demands production.
It’s in daring to tell the truth, even when it makes you feel like disappearing.
Running a small yoga school means holding space for others
while also holding your own overwhelm, your own exhaustion,
your own aching desire to just not be online today.
But still, we show up.
Still teaching. Still trusting.
Still offering a practice rooted not in performance, but in presence.
And that, more than anything, is what I hope people feel when they walk into our space.
If You’re Reading This
If you’ve found your way here: to our blog, our classes, or our strange and sacred little corner of the yoga world - thank you.
Thank you for choosing depth over gloss.
Thank you for trusting slowness.
Thank you for making space for realness, for softness, for silence.
You are part of this practice too.
And your quiet presence matters more than you know.
